Hello and welcome to Queer's Fact, the podcast bringing you queer history from around the world

and throughout time. My name is Eli. I'm Alice. I'm Jason. And today we're again talking

about the 18th century French spy, the Chevalier d'Ion.

We have some content warnings before we start this episode.

The only major one is discussion of misogyny and trans misogyny throughout the episode,

both at the time and in modern scholarship. And I'd like to particularly warn for discussion of the modern rhetoric of pathologization of trans

identities that goes on. I'll also mention that although we've chosen to use they then pronounce

to refer to them, for reasons we'll continue to explore here, we are going to read out quotes that

refer to Deon as he, him, and she her. We're also going to

include a brief mention of anti-Semitism. So if any of that sounds like something that you

don't want to listen to, feel free to skip this one and listen to a different episode.

This is the second of a two-part episode, if you weren't aware. So it's probably best that you listen to the first part first.

I will quickly go over the first half of their life now, though,

to refresh all of our memories.

So Dianne was born in 1728, assigned male,

raised as a boy, and began a successful political career

in the service of the French government under Louis the 15. While they were serving as the acting ambassador in London, their relationship with the

French government quite dramatically broke down. I really recommend you listen to the first

episode. And they spend about a decade in exile because of that. During this time, rumours began to circulate that they

were really a woman who had been raised as a boy. When Louis XVIth died and Louis XVIth became

king, Dain was recalled from exile and they made it a condition that they'd be publicly recognized

as a woman. Despite this, they were extremely opposed to taking on female clothing, at least partially

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